God called Abram to go to a new land. Abram went. No explanations requested. No explanations offered. By answering that call, though, Abram’s life was transformed from ordinary to extraordinary.
Some things in life are just that simple. Probably more than we want to admit. How often do we have a clear understanding of what is right and what we should do, yet we choose to do something else? How much better could life be if we responded to God’s calling the way that Abram did?
Charles Wesley spent his life answering God’s call. His father and both of his grandfathers were ministers in the Church of England, and Charles was ordained after two of his brothers before him. Answering the call to ordained ministry was an ordinary part of life in his family, and he carried out his ministry in a very ordinary way. Ordinary, that is, until one day in 1738 when Charles was working through a crisis of faith. That night he experienced “a strange palpitation of the heart; and said, yet feared to say, ‘I believe! I believe!'” A few days later his brother John had his famous experience at Aldersgate. From that time their ministries stopped being ordinary and became extraordinary.
The following year a collection called Hymns and Sacred Songs was published. It contained Forth in Thy Name, O Lord, a new hymn by Charles Wesley. Read the lines of the first stanza:
Forth in thy name, O Lord, I go,
my daily labor to pursue;
thee, only thee, resolved to know
in all I think or speak or do.
Abram answered God’s true calling for his life. Charles Wesley did, too. As we continue our pilgrim journey, may each of us learn to do the same. The call is reason enough.
Follow the Path!
CARadke
[Use with Choosing Abram, day 20 of A Labyrinth Pilgrimage]